Team Xbox’s UI team has revealed they’re making some tweaks to how we play Xbox next year.
In an Xbox Insider blog post, senior product manager lead of Xbox Experiences Ivy Krislov announced they would be aunching a series of experiments for the months of 2023, with the intention of addressing fan requests, as well as keeping in line with trends and personalizing the experience.
So, some of the Xbox Insiders in the Alpha Skip-Ahead ring will be experiencing these changes, to get feedback ahead of a public release. Xbox Experience also wants to add new options for cahme channels and collections, curating based on variables like your Game Pass subscription and what games you’ve played.
They have even named some of these planned updates:
- A row of “Jump Back In” icons will allow you to immediately return to recently used games and apps
- Settings, Store, Search, and My Games & Apps will get dedicated tiles on Xbox Home
- Visual identifiers and design changes will ease you in to new layouts that will be easier to understand and remember
- Curated categories and recommendations will appear when you scroll down
For those unfamiliar with it, the New Xbox Experience was a major UI overhaul Microsoft implemented on Xbox One consoles in 2020 and was the default experience of the Xbox Series X/S consoles when they launched. This itself was an iteration of the Metro design language Microsoft first came up with as far back as 2010. Originally unveiled alongside the Windows Phone 7, Metro would eventually be adopted for Windows 8, Zune, Outlook, and of course Xbox.
Metro’s design language is all about the tiles, and the Sepoe font to make for easy reading, even in smaller tiles in smaller screens. Inspired by the readability of public transport signs, even in poor weather conditions, Metro eschews the superfluous graphics found in earlier versions of Microsoft, as well as competitors Android and Apple, in favor of immediately accessible and understandable systems.
So if the original Xbox UI has a nostalgic feel with its organic green pulsating orbs reflecting the zeitgeist of its own time, today’s Xbox experience is all about immediately understandable and accessible interfaces. In spite of that focus on usability, the UI is also attractive to look at and visually interesting, again because the Xbox Experience team put focus on those design elements also serving the greater purpose of accessibility. On the side, that original Xbox UI is actually available as a dynamic background for Xbox Series X/S consoles, if you feel like reliving the mid-2000s.
While console UIs don’t really affect gameplay, every console owner knows that they spend more time getting familiarized with those design elements more than in any single particular game they own for those consoles. They are a major part of the console gaming experience, and Microsoft demonstrates a commitment to continue improving and iterating on that experience.
We had previously reported on older Xbox UI updates that gave you new options in sorting your game library, and new badges to identify when games are unavailable to play.
Source: XboxWire via TheGamer
